


Count All the Stars

by HyacinthsSoul



Category: HIStory3: 那一天 | HIStory3: Make Our Days Count
Genre: Fix-It of Sorts, M/M, Post-Canon Fix-It
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-19
Updated: 2019-12-19
Packaged: 2021-02-26 04:01:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,869
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21857248
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HyacinthsSoul/pseuds/HyacinthsSoul
Summary: “Please don’t cry, little Xi Gu. I didn’t cross all these universes just to make you cry.”
Relationships: Xiang Hao Ting/Yu Xi Gu
Comments: 28
Kudos: 193





	Count All the Stars

**Author's Note:**

> The final episode of MODC broke my heart and soul. This story is my way of processing it and trying, in some small way, to bring our beloved boys together again.

“Dr. Yu, I’m so sorry to trouble you, but you have a visitor and he’s insisting that you see him.”

“Mrs. Chen, you know I prefer not to be interrupted when I’m compiling my research data. Please tell him to schedule an appointment during my posted office hours.”

“I know, Dr. Yu, and I did tell him so. But he refuses to leave, and he’s—well, he’s a very large man, sir, and very intense. He also gave me a message for you, but frankly it doesn’t make much sense. Do you want me to call campus security?”

“What’s the message?”

“‘Tell him I’ve come from the Rose Nebula.’”

“From the— _what is his name? ”_

“Xiang. Xiang Hao Ting.”

~

Does one stand to greet a ghost? The point is moot, Yu Xi Gu realizes, because he couldn’t move from his chair if he tried. Just the sight of the man in the doorway is enough to drain all the color from his face and the strength from his limbs. 

Xiang Hao Ting. Older, wearier, his face touched by grief and pain, but undeniably Hao Ting. 

_Someone’s_ Hao Ting anyway. Not his. He’d buried his Hao Ting years ago, along with all he ever knew of joy.

Despite the shock, Yu Xi Gu is the first to break the silence. “You’re dead,” he says softly. “But I suppose you know that.”

“Yes,” Hao Ting replies, gaze never leaving his face. “That’s what took me so long. Well, that and several years heading down a blind alley of time-travel research before I refocused on alternate universe theory.”

He’s huge. Yu Xi Gu remembers him as big but he’s _towering_. Surely he could cross the office in two strides of those long legs. But he just stands unmoving in the doorway, eyes locked on Yu Xi Gu as though afraid he’ll disappear. An understandable fear, under the circumstances.

“Am I dead too?”

“Where I come from? Yes. Hit by a car at eighteen, not long after we moved into our apartment together. What about me?”

Yu Xi Gu swallows hard against an upswell of complicated grief. “Nineteen. You were hiking in the mountains—there was a landslide. I wasn’t with you. I’d been offered a prestigious summer research internship, and I thought that was more important than a vacation with my boyfriend.”

“Xi Gu, surely you don’t blame yourself.”

“Why shouldn’t I? The man I loved died alone on a mountaintop because I put my ambitions ahead of his happiness.”

“Oh, Xi Gu.” Now Hao Ting does close the distance between them, kneeling at Yu Xi Gu’s feet. “You didn’t bring down the mountain. None of us has power over life and death.”

Yu Xi Gu doesn’t even realize he’s weeping until Hao Ting’s big hand comes up to gently wipe the tears from his face. 

“Please don’t cry, little Xi Gu. I didn’t cross all these universes just to make you cry.”

This man isn’t his Hao Ting. He’s not. But his hands feel the same, and so does the sheltering warmth of his big body as he draws Yu Xi Gu into his arms. And so Yu Xi Gu clings to him, sobbing as though he still has any heart left to break.

~

Yu Xi Gu takes him home. What else can he do? There’s no one else in this world to whom Hao Ting wouldn’t be a stranger, a madman, or a ghost. 

Besides, this man proved the many-worlds theory of quantum mechanics and broke through the walls between the worlds just to see Xi Gu’s face again. It might be polite to at least feed him dinner.

“You moved,” Hao Ting says when they reach Xi Gu’s building, at the same instant Xi Gu says, “You got glasses.” They both laugh awkwardly.

“I bought a condo here last year,” Xi Gu says, leading him to the elevator. “On the twelfth floor,” he adds, pushing the appropriate elevator button.

Hao Ting taps the nose bridge of his glasses. “I studied so much I made myself nearsighted. It’s all I did, after…”

“After I died,” Xi Gu says.

“After you died. Yes. It was a kind of madness for a while, I think. I was obsessed. I barely slept, barely ate, but I studied every waking moment. I was convinced that if I didn’t excel, if I didn’t fulfill my part of our dream, you would look down on me from those stars and be disappointed.”

They’ve reached Xi Gu’s condo. He fumbles with the keys because his eyes are blurred by tears; it takes three tries to get the door unlocked and usher Hao Ting inside. Only then does Xi Gu dare to look at him again.

“I could never,” he says, “ever be disappointed in you.”

They lean toward each other then, almost imperceptibly, but with impeccable feline timing Chester chooses that moment to appear. He trots in on his pretty white paws, meowing a greeting that is half “hello” and half “my food is late, you worthless human,” and the moment is broken. With a little exclamation of pleasure, Hao Ting kneels down to pet him, stroking Chester’s glossy black fur as the cat arches and preens.

“From a beetle to a cat,” Hao Ting says with a smile. “Your taste in pets has evolved.”

“His name is Chester,” says Xi Gu. “If you’re a physicist, you can probably guess why.” Hao Ting’s answering grin tells him that yes, he knows the story of the famous F.D.C. “Chester” Willard, the Siamese cat once listed as co-author on a physics paper.

“But your Chester is not a Siamese,” Hao Ting points out. “He’s very cute, though. He looks like he’s wearing a furry tuxedo.”

“Well, you named a black beetle Whitey. Why shouldn’t I name my black cat Chester? Come into the kitchen, I’ll feed him and fix us some dinner. I’ve got a noodle dish left over from last night. Would you like a drink?”

“I think we could both use one.”

The domestic duties of pet care and food preparation keep the awkwardness at bay for a few minutes. Only when they’re seated across from one another at the table does the sight of that face hit Xi Gu like a blow again. Familiar and strange. Beloved and terrifying. 

“There’s so much I want to ask,” he says.

“As a physicist,” Hao Ting says, “or as a man?”

Xi Gu winces. “You always did speak bluntly. At least my Hao Ting did.”

“I’m much the same, I think you’ll find. Once I created the technology to sidestep—that’s what I call it, sidestepping—from my own universe to its parallels, I looked for worlds where the life you led with your Hao Ting was as similar to my own as possible. With one essential difference.”

“That I was the one who lived, and you who died.”

“Yes. I found some shortcuts for comparing our experiences—ways to scientifically measure the degree of resonance between my world and the one I’d sidestepped into. That helped me narrow it down. No point wasting my time in a universe where you still had your Hao Ting, or where we’d never loved one another at all.”

Xi Gu takes a generous swig of his baijiu, almost choking at its strength. The bottle had been a gift from his student research assistants, unopened till tonight. 

“I understand the former,” he says, “but why not a clean slate with a Xi Gu who’d never loved and lost you? You could have charmed him. You could charm anyone, no matter how resistant.” He smiles faintly. “I should know.”

Hao Ting tips up his own glass, not even blinking at the burning strength of the alcohol. “I didn’t have the heart left to charm anyone,” he says quietly. “I left my heart in an intersection with that eighteen-year-old boy. But a Xi Gu who’d suffered the same kind of loss...with such a Xi Gu, I thought, I might find a bond in our grief.”

“Some would say it’d be simpler to move on,” Xi Gu says, “than to set out to revolutionize all human understanding of the universe.”

“Like you moved on?” Hao Ting looks around the kitchen and past it, to the living room beyond. “I see no spouse, no children, just an older, sadder Xi Gu and his cat. I did try,” he adds with a helpless shrug, “because everyone said I should. By the time I earned my master’s degree I was dating someone—a woman, another physicist, brilliant and beautiful. Everything I should’ve wanted. I was even planning to live with her when we both went abroad to Stanford for our doctorate work.” He falls silent again.

“But?” Xi Gu prompts.

“But I couldn’t let you go. How could I ask anyone else to live in your shadow? You were…” He blinks rapidly, tears shining in his eyes. “You were the love of my life, Yu Xi Gu. Even after you were gone.”

Without a word, Xi Gu gets up and leaves the room. When he returns, he’s holding a picture frame in his hand.

“This has been on my bedside table since the day he died,” he says, handing it to Hao Ting.

Hao Ting’s smile is shaky but genuine. “Your birthday,” he says. “When I came to you wearing the necklace of lights. I have this one too, in a box of memories.”

“That was the very moment I knew I loved you,” Xi Gu says. “I was too shy to say it yet, but I knew. You were the love of my life too, Xiang Hao Ting.”

He acts then, before he can overthink it, before the shyness can consume him again.

Gently he takes the picture frame from Hao Ting’s hands and sets it aside.

Solemnly he leans down and presses a soft kiss to Hao Ting’s lips.

~

Much later, as they lie spent and half dozing in Xi Gu’s bed, their hands meet and clasp in the darkness.

“I’m not your Yu Xi Gu,” he whispers.

“And I’m not your Xiang Hao Ting. Will you have me anyway?”

Xi Gu thinks of that boy on a mountaintop. His own Hao Ting, who won and then shattered his heart. His own Hao Ting, forever lost and forever nineteen. His first love. His true love. The boy he will never forget, even as each day of Xi Gu’s life takes him farther and farther away.

Even in this other Hao Ting’s arms, Xi Gu knows, his own Hao Ting can never be forgotten. But perhaps in this other Hao Ting’s arms, it will no longer hurt to remember.

“‘Something there is more immortal even than the stars,’” Xi Gu quotes softly. “Walt Whitman.”

Hao Ting squeezes his hand. “That’s beautiful,” he says, “but what does it mean?”

“It means yes, Xiang Hao Ting. It means I will always love you—every you, in every world, until the last star falls from the sky.”

Hao Ting’s big body wraps around him then, warm and alive and real, as they weep together for two lost boys and dare to imagine a future for two found men.

**Author's Note:**

> The poem Xi Gu quotes is On the Beach at Night, by Walt Whitman. It concludes with this verse:
> 
> Something there is,  
> (With my lips soothing thee, adding I whisper,  
> I give thee the first suggestion, the problem and indirection,)  
> Something there is more immortal even than the stars,  
> (Many the burials, many the days and nights, passing away,)  
> Something that shall endure longer even than lustrous Jupiter  
> Longer than sun or any revolving satellite,  
> Or the radiant sisters the Pleiades.


End file.
